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And now is when there's time to find a better way to administer property tax and tax delinquency in Detroit, months before the auction's artificial timeline closes all options because the foreclosure machine has to grind on.

They say you can stop

The county's tax foreclosure auction is not good. In theory, tax-delinquent property is foreclosed, auctioned and sold to a tax-paying buyer who'll inhabit or improve the property. But it doesn't work that way:

Most auction properties are bought by speculators or bulk buyers who are content to let their purchases languish. Some occupied homes are auctioned each year. Auctioned structures are more likely to become blighted, and the foreclosure process itself is plagued with inconsistencies.

Sabree himself told me last year that he doesn't believe the auction is good for our community, and that he holds it because he is required by law to do so. That's where conversations about the auction normally stop. If Sabree were to postpone the auction, he told me, he believed that the state — either the state Treasurer or the Attorney General — would step in.

That was last year.

But now Michigan has a new state Treasurer, appointed by newly elected Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and a new Attorney General, progressive Democrat Dana Nessel.

For her part, Nessel says she's not going to force a county treasurer to hold an auction that displaces struggling Detroiters.

“I would absolutely want to work with Eric Sabree and anyone who was in that situation, because at the end of the day, I’m old-fashioned and I subscribe to this ridiculous belief that this office should be about helping people," Nessel told the Free Press editorial board before her election last November. "Especially when you have a county treasurer who says they want to utilize different avenues to assist people to stay in their homes … Yes, I would want to work with him to ensure you could do that.”

Mario Morrow, a spokesman for Sabree, says that the treasurer's office is hiring the Flint-based Center for Community Progress to examine the state's property tax and auction laws. That's a great, and long overdue, step. Morrow says the center will research how other states conduct such proceedings, and whether changes to the laws are warranted.

Short answer: Yes

There is no shortage of data to show that the foreclosure auction process is flawed. For years, homes were foreclosed based on inflated assessments. The homes of at least 10,000 people who shouldn't have had to pay any property tax have been auctioned. And it's no secret that many more homeowners are eligible for that property tax exemption, offered to those living in poverty, than receive it. Homes sold in the auction are more likely to be bought by speculators, and to become blighted and abandoned.

The process should be reconfigured to protect vulnerable homeowners from the risk of foreclosure, and to eliminate the cash incentive for counties to hold such auctions.

Any change to state law, of course, requires the approval of the GOP-controlled Michigan Legislature.

Let's say they're into it

Here's what needs to happen:

• Get the word out.

TheThe City of Detroit administers a state-created property-tax exemption program for those living in poverty.. But the poverty exemption is underutilized.

University of Michigan researchers found that about 40,000 owner-occupied Detroit households are eligible each year to receive the exemption., but in 2017, only about 5,500 applied for it, and only 5,200 received it.

Last year, the City of Detroit settled a lawsuit filed by the ACLU over the poverty exemption, saying that the city hadn't done enough to insure that eligible homeowners were told about, and could obtain the the exemption. The city agreed to step up its outreach, and to streamline the application process.

• Make the poverty exemption retroactive.

The poverty exemption is a valuable tool for tax-delinquent residents trying to stay in their homes, but its scope is limited: A homeowner who signs up for the first time in a given tax year is still on the hook for unpaid taxes from previous years, even if the homeowner qualified for the poverty exemption in past years. With interest and fees assessed on the balance, those sums can balloon. For an impoverished person, paying down that balance can be nearly impossible.

The county should ask the Legislature to make the poverty exemption retroactive.

• Remove the financial incentive to foreclose and auction properties.

In many states, property owners whose homes have been foreclosed and auctioned for more than the value of their delinquent property taxes get to keep the difference, minus reasonable fees.

But in Michigan, the county auctioning the property pockets that difference. The tax foreclosure auction has netted $421 million for Wayne County since the housing market crash, a Bridge Magazine analysis found. Putting residents out of their homes shouldn't be a profit center for county governments.